A tribal deck with two wizards in the command zone? You guessed it! Its an elf tribal deck. I've been playing control for a while and my playgroup says it is annoying. Everyone has been playing tribal decks since the release of commander 2017, so this is my experiment to play tribal instead of control. I considered cats, zombies, allies, goblins, and wizards, but I decided elves were the best for their price (I already have a lot of the cards for elves). You may be asking, "why would you make temur elves? Most elves are green, followed by white and black. There are great commanders in other colors like ezuri, edric, sisay, karador, derevi, selvala, yisan marath, nath, Rhys, and even other partner combinations. Why would you pick thrasios and ludevic?" This question has several answers. First of all is thrasios. He is a broken infinite mana sink in the command zone. Some Elves already tap for 4+ mana, so just having an Umbral Mantle or a Sword of the Paruns gives you infinite mana. I wanted to abuse this, so it narrowed it down to ezuri, sisay, selvala, marath, yisan and various thrasios combinations. From here it came down to color and commander preferences. Red is good because cards like Fervor are broken in elf decks (and I can't afford concordant crossroads). Elves have the issue of having to wait for your elf to lose summoning sickness as everyone has a chance to kill it. With haste, you can play with safety, and you only need to worry about the people who left mana open during your turn. Blue gives you counterspells to protect your elves from removal / board wipes, to stop other counterspells, to stop fog effects, and even to counter other combos. Blue also gives Momir Vig, Simic Visionary, Dramatic Reversal, Intruder Alarm, and Aphetto Alchemist which are too good to pass up. The commanders themselves are actually pretty good. In elf decks, the more cards you draw, the more cards you play, so having two ways to draw cards in the command zone is perfect. Not only does it make hands more consistent and make mana heavy hands better, but it let's you dig for combos after you have plently of mana. Ludevic gets your opponents attacking each other and lets you dig for a combo. Thrasios makes it so you win the instant you get infinite mana because with the other cards that would already be in the deck like Temur Ascendancy and Presence of Gond the only not so great card you need to add to the deck is Gemstone Array (which is part of a few combos and not even that bad). Thrasios also gives you a great mana sink for the 30+ mana you have by turn 5 to dig for a combo. We may miss the tutors from black, but red, green, and blue have plenty of their own: Long-Term Plans, Muddle the Mixture, Drift of Phantasms, Gamble, Elvish Harbinger, Momir Vig, Simic Visionary. It may sound silly to pay 26 mana to play elvish harbinger, put momir vig on top of the deck, activate thrasios, play momir vig, play elvish mystic, put drift of phantasms on top of deck, activate thrasios, transmute drift of phantasms for umbral mantle, play umbral mantle, equip it to your tapped viridian joiner, and pay 3 to untap viridian joiner to make infinite mana, but 26 mana is easy with this deck. Other elf decks like paradox sisay will fizzel if paradox engine gets countered or if someone plays a toxic deluge, but in this deck with all of the card draw, haste, and backup combos, those will usually only set me back one or two turns. The deck also has counterspells to avoid those situations in the first place.
This deck may be for you if:
You like math, particularly counting how much mana you will have after playing all of your spells in the right order.
You like all in combo decks, but like to win a completely different way every game.
You want to nonchalantly say, "okay, now I have 56 mana" and then draw cards with thrasios until you win on turn 4 to 6.
You would like to play more than 10 spells a turn, often.
You like complicated decks with a lot of decisions to make.
This deck may not be for you if:
You want to play control.
You want to deal 20 damage a turn until you win.
You don't like math.
You want a deck that can win often against competitive decks like storm, food chain, and protean hulk.
You don't want to spend two minutes combo-ing with paradox engine, intruder alarm, or haste elves to get 20+ mana to draw into a combo and have mana to play it.
You don't like to play creatures.
You think using the combat step in a combo deck is demeaning.
You don't want to advertise that you are about to win.
You don't want everyone to team up against you unless you will win anyway.
The goal of this deck is to get all the mana (infinite) ASAP and draw deck with thrasios (averages this at turn 5 without disruption). From there it plays a card to give things haste:
Emblem of the Warmind, Fervor, Fires of Yavimaya, and Temur Ascendancy
And infinite power. Either infinite creatures Presence of Gond, infinitely large creatures Joraga Warcaller / Umbral Mantle, or infinite infinitely large creatures Gelatinous Genesis
Every card is part of a combo in some way so I will just list some of the main ones:Aphetto Alchemist / Seeker of Skybreak and Illusionist's Bracers and any mana creature without summoming sickness. Targets itself and other creature to repeatedly untap other creature.
Argothian Elder / Blossom Dryad / Juniper Order Druid / Krosan Restorer / Ley Druid / Stone-Seeder Hierophant / Voyaging Satyr and Simic Growth Chamber / Izzet Boilerworks / Gruul Turf / Dictate of Karametra / Elvish Guidance / Heartbeat of Spring / Illusionist's Bracers / Mana Flare / Regal Behemoth / Zendikar Resurgent / Zhur-Taa Ancient and Umbral Mantle / Pemmin's Aura / Freed from the Real / Sword of the Paruns. Various combos. Way too long to explain.
Isochron Scepter and Dramatic Reversal / Paradox Engine untaps scepter and 3 mana creatures repeatedly.
Intruder Alarm and Presence of Gond
Umbral Mantle and Viridian Joiner umbral mantle makes the creature bigger which makes more mana etc
Karametra's Acolyte / Elvish Archdruid / Priest of Titania / Wirewood Channeler and either Umbral Mantle / Sword of the Paruns or Gemstone Array and Pemmin's Aura / Freed from the Real. Wirewood channeler does not need the gemstone array.
Retraction Helix and Paradox Engine / Intruder Alarm although in this deck when you play paradox engine or intruder Alarm, you are almost guaranteed to win on the spot. Retraction helix is mostly just for if someone steals thrasios.
Aphetto Alchemist and Isochron Scepter and Benefactor's Draught
Any card suggestions or cuts are welcome.
